Step-by-step guide for drawing up a home working policy

A homeworking policy states what you expect from your employees when they work from home. You also describe what the law says about hybrid working and whether employees receive a home-working budget and home-working allowance.

Use these 5 steps to draw up a homeworking policy yourself:

1. Establish the requirements

First, ask your employees what they need to be able to work successfully from home. For example, do they want to consult online every day, or is twice a week enough to stay engaged? Through which channels do they prefer to communicate, and which digital tools will help? Knowing your employees' needs will help to make the hybrid working environment as pleasant as possible for everyone.

2. Check the Flexible Working Act

Check what the law says about hybrid working. It is good to know that hybrid working is not a legal right of the employee, but an option you can decide on as an employer. If your business has more than 10 employees, they do have the right to submit a written request to you for flexible working. This is laid down in the Flexible Working Act. According to this law, your employees may only make this request if they:

• have been employed for at least 6 months
• submitted any previous request 1 year or more ago
• submit the written request at least 2 months prior to the effective date of working from home.

If you receive a request for flexible working from your employee, you are obliged to discuss it. If you do not agree with the request, you must let them know at least 1 month before the start date.

In addition to the Flexible Working Act, it is also important to take into account the Working Conditions Act. This states, among other things, that you must provide a good and safe home workplace. You must also respect employees' privacy. For example, you are not allowed to simply monitor how they perform their work from home. This is laid down in the privacy legislation GDPR.

3. Determine home-working budget and allowance

You can accommodate your employees in the costs of working from home by offering a homework budget and homework allowance. A home-work budget is meant for setting up a safe, ergonomic home office. A homework allowance is given to contribute to, for instance, heating costs, and the cost of coffee and tea. You can give your employees €2.35 per day in untaxed homework allowance.

4. Test your provisional homework policy

Once you have completed all the steps above, save all the agreements made in a document. This is your provisional homework policy. Present this policy to a number of employees and discuss it with them. Is anything missing, or are certain points unclear? Then fine-tune your homeworking policy based on your employees' input.

5. Finalise your homeworking policy

Once you have processed all input and feedback, finalise your homeworking policy. Preferably have the final document checked by a lawyer to make sure there are no mistakes. Then share the homeworking policy with all your employees so that everyone is aware of it.

Homeworking policy topics

The following topics should not be missing from a homeworking policy:

• The form of hybrid working.
• The type of work performed from home.
• The amount of the home-working budget.
• The amount of the home-working allowance.
• The guidelines the home office must meet.
• The policy regarding confidential data and log-in codes.
• The policy regarding the protection of personal data.
• Agreements on the hours when your employees should be available.
• The measures that will be taken if the home office policy is violated.

Still unsure about the benefits of hybrid working? Read more about the benefits of working at home and at the office | KVK